What's With Skinny Arms? Faith Hill and Redbook

She looks much better before. The after is awful, way too fake, kind of like the photoshopping Elle did on Kelly Clarkson (which was even more drastic).
Come on now Redbook. Surely that wasn't necessary?

Come on. As a 42 yr old, I appreciate Faith in her un-retouched photograph. Redbook - Figure out who your target reader is and embrace her!! I'm quite confident she is not a 25 year old!!!

Egads... She looks a thousand times better in reality.

Exhibit A - Cute female human
Exhibit B - The attack of Skeletor

What is wrong with these retouching people, that they believe this abomination sells magazines?

The first picture looks so much better. In the second, she doesn't look like a real human being, which I suppose is how "the industry" sees women anyway.

I was having a conversation about country music a couple of years ago, and was told by a friend, how he happened to have breakfast at a restaurant just off I-95 in Florida. The restaurant was really crowded so he shared a table with some strangers. He said one of them was a very beautiful woman, but stressed how nice and friendly she was. It never came out at breakfast, but as he was leaving he saw "The Bus" parked outside and realized she was Faith Hill. I guess she had a long sleeved shirt on that day :-)

UGLY BETTY had a great episode about retouching. There was a "super model" who was slightly overweight. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the way she looked, but in doing the cover of the magazine, they did all kinds of things to her picture until she didn't look like herself at all. And in an effort to undermine the new editor, Wilhemina released the unretouched photos. Imagine her shock and dismay when the world (not the fashion world, but the real world) embraced them! It was a terrific episode, dealing with unrealistic expectations.

Thank you for posting the original picture, what an eye-opener. I knew "artists" did this, but I never saw a before and after like this one. I was amazed earlier this year when I saw an Allure Magazine cover with a beautiful girl who I thought might be about 17. It turned out to be 47 year old actress Julianne Moore! They literally erased 30 years from her - disgusting!

THe music industry does the same thing with recordings. I guess when one crosses over into entertainment, all restrictions go away.

Quoting Chip Taylor:

I don't want you under my roof with your 86 proof
Watered down 'til it tastes like tea
If you're going to pull my string
Make it the real thing for me

Ummm... ew... it looks like her arm was replaced by a plastic prothesis!

If I were Faith Hill and I saw the retouched photo, I would be rightfully pissed off. They're basically saying "You're too fat and old for our cover, so we'll have to airbrush you to death to make you acceptable". I would rather have seen the original picture on the magazine cover, not the shiny, superskinny, waaaay too airbrushed second picture.

I think it's good for people to express a little bit of angst about this. So many people just say - "get over it - that's what magazines do". Just because that's what they do - doesn't it right.

In about 8 years time, 3 out of 4 of us will be overweight. Meanwhile magazine editors are making normal weight people thinner (or elongated). WTF????

You'd be surprised how few individuals do actually think critically about the imagery that they see...

I wonder if they did any airbrushing on Tim McGraw's pictures (he appears on the back of the magazine, in a "second cover")?

I would LOVE to see Faith go after Redbook, legally. There's gotta be some legalese she could use - "false advertising" or something. Definately sexual discrimination if they brushed her picture and not Tim's. Maybe if enough entertainers start making a stink about their lives being erased with the swish of a brush (I consider wrinkles awards for a life well-lived), the magazines will knock it off.

Just an observation: The 'retouched' photo is taken at a different angle than the 'before.' These are two different photos. Moving more to the photographers left changes the apparent thickness of the arm as well as widening the body and altering the light and shadows. The first photo is also taken from a higher angle which tends to 'thicken' everything as it gets closer to the lens. That said, it sure would have been nice to take those photos :-)

dr. j - you really need to have your eyes checked if you think those are two different photos. perhaps it's the result of the photoshopping that makes you think that they are two different photos. go to jezebel.com and go through the archives to find the two photos flipping back and forth on top of each other so you can see the difference. no difference in angle at all.

Sorry, I still think they are two different photos from the "100's" that were taken at the photo shoot. How do you explain the second arm in the 'after' photo. That was revealed by moving the camera to the left. I do not have an agenda.

It honestly looks like they just added her head to a different body. When will they ever learn that natural is so much better than Photoshopped?

There might be a possibility that if that individual is plain born slim, but appears fat any editor would airbrush that to make her thinner.

Dr. J; Adding that arm through photoshopping would be childishly easy. Find a nice section of the other arm, copy a bit, turn it so it's at a proper angle, then erase the excess.
It's visually appealing in that it fills the space left by the alteration of the thighs and waist.

Yeah, and they changed the angle of her left foot too! Maybe Faith will comment on the blog and tell us the story.

Perhaps I need to add one more thing. I never said the picture wasn't altered. I said they did not alter that photo. I believe it is a different photo from the shoot and I'm sticking to it.

I just saw the issue and found Tim McGraw on the back cover; funny, no Photoshopping, is there?

Dr J - you may be right. Somehow the people over at Gawker Media (who run the site "Jezebel") managed to get hold of the supposed original pic. So presumably the creative guy at Redbook must had leaked the picture?

Dr.J said:
Maybe Faith will comment on the blog and tell us the story.[...]

hahaha whats she going to tell us? Photoshop is what helped her get famous. Photoshop and retouching is every celebrity's best friend short of plastic surgery.

You have no idea how much photshop is used in this industry. Every page in ever magazine is retouched to some extent. Some much better then others, that cover of redbook is a good example of bad retouching.

Ren said:
Photoshop is what helped her get famous[...]

Dr.J said:
[...]

Video killed the radio star.

I agree with everyone who said she is better in her original. The cover looks like a creepy wax figure.

Dr.J said:
[...]

Video's have alot of work done to them.
They stretch the images between 5-10% in order to lengthen and slim down whoever's in it, they can also go in frame by frame and retouch the image much like they do in photoshop. They do a large number of takes, have stylists, lighting, even the voice is put through a computer to even it out and smooth it over, the whole lot. So it is essentially just as fake, if not more, than magazines.

you're and as magazines. Sorry...it's monday.

Her arm looks like a Barbie doll arm in the retouched photo! All they need to do now is shape the hand into the useless Barbie doll hand pose, and the transformation is complete.

I saw this on my fav feminist blog feministing.com and it was sad to see that people in the marketing business see that this is what we wanna see?? On the other hand, most people arent attracted to old, wrinkled, or saggy appearances for advertising anything...so I guess a lot of the reason why marketers and advertisers are the way they are is because we want to see these fake but still good-looking faces. It sells.

IF Dr. J is correct that the two photos are different ones from the same shoot, s/he is incorrect that it has not been retouched significantly via Photoshop. I've done Photoshop retouching for publications myself, and I've been in photographs that others have retouched.

Trust me, it shows all the classic signs of having been heavily retouched.

P.S. Anyone unfamiliar with industry photoshopping might enjoy http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/bikini1.html and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT2AHZpnhy0

It saddens me that in the former, the "before" images look so... so... *unnatural* to me. But we are just not used to seeing reality anymore, and this effects our abilities to discern photoshopped from unphotoshopped images.

Faith is now 40 and competing against the beautiful Taylor Swift's of the world. And the Carrie Underwood's...

I would venture to guess that she LOVES photo shop as when the camera gets her off guard (like when Carrie won)...we see a spoiled, aggressive aging diva...not a peaches and cream sweetheart from Mississippi. I have no clue how Tim tolerates her. I would guess it is because of the precious kids. Makes you wonder if they would have ever married had she not been pregnant first. And before the "Faith brigade" rips on this post...do the math.

faith looks amazing for a 39 year Redbook you should be ashamed, your the reason many older women think there not good enough & turn to plastic surgery. i hope when im 39 i look that good. i think before the people that say faith hill isnt good enough & do these retouches should really good look at themselves.

That is unbelievable. Her touched up arm looks like pure bone... Horrible publicity for Redbook.

Blame the magazine / publication not the retoucher.

I am a retoucher and I like the natural looks. The editors send the photos back with notes that say more, more, more. Its ridiculous!

I think I'm the only one in this thread to say so, but I really like the touched up one better. The "original" isn't ugly, but my arms look a lot like that and I don't like my arms. And my back would do that in a dress, too, and I hate it. And I'm only 23 and 120 lbs! Forgetting the fact that the photo doesn't look much like the "original," I think the touched up one is more a picture of the current "ideal" for women. Face it: women aren't praised for being natural and covered in skin. And I think, at this moment in time, most of the women posting here would rather be "ideal," but feel a moral obligation to defend "natural." Yeah, it's a little shallow, but we're all human... we just aren't expected to look like it.

its very difficult for girls and women to have a real perception of beauty with the media attention on good looks which shows unnatural women most of the time.But people have to realise most of it is lighting,editing and what not.a healthy diet with adequate exercise will help ,but do remember we all have flaws so dont compare your self to what you see on tv or in a magazine.instead focus on your assets and play them up .... love to all

The touched up photo is perfect! And I like it! Too many women complaining, here!! Envy?????

Her arm looks really freaky.The elbow is much farther from her shoulder than is readlist and if you put that fake arm into prspective of where her fake hand would be... that is really weird. I think if she were standing her fake knuckles might drag the floor!

i think the arm looks fine because the photo lens distorts the object closest to the lens, so the photoshop just compensates. They didn't overcompensate in this case, it looks realistic. Not every mag goes to the extent of ralph lauren.